Bookwriting - Part I

Danny and I find the book to be the hardest thing to get right when writing a musical.

For me, the bookwriting process has been different every time. For example, I did a complete draft of my thesis musical, The Quantification of Relative Human Insignificance, while I was waiting for my second year of grad school to start. Then, after school began, I went back to the beginning and worked each scene and song with my collaborator. It was great to have a draft of the book as a template. But that’s never happened again. More often, when my collaborator and I write the first few songs, we don’t yet know the whole story.

Our two-personal musical comedy Regretting Almost Everything didn’t need a book when it was first presented. We did it as a cabaret with just enough narration to enable the audience to follow and stay engaged in the story. It worked, and I learned two very valuable lessons:
(1) You don’t need a lot of book; and (2) You can skip the boring parts.